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GORDON MURRAYS F1 BRIEF
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Gordon Murray may hretired from Formula 1over 20 years ago, but
he has plenty of ideas how to answer the spobig questions such ahow to boost overtakinand reduce costs
B Y E D F O S T E R
GORDONMURRAYSF1 BRIEF:
SIMPLERCHEAPEBETTER2
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Morning has only
recently broken at
Gordon Murray
Design in Surrey
and the only sound,
other than the birds,
is a very trick, carburetted four-cylinder engine
approaching. Its not something you
expect to hear at 7am in a leafy suburb
of Shalford. The Green Meanie only
has 130bhp, Gordon Murray says
about his Lotus Cortina as we sit down
in the boardroom a few moments later,
which in todays money for a road car
isnt huge. But it only weighs 830kg
and it goes like hell!
The ex-Formula 1 designer is looking
fresh and colourful his shirt is a trademark
floral number and hes managed to find time
to talk to us before blasting up to London to
launch his new city cars, the T.25 and T.27.
Back in the January 2000 issue of Motor
Sportwe delved into what Formula 1 might
look like in the future. Stirling Moss, Max
Mosley, Jacques Villeneuve, Frank Williams,
Ken Tyrrell and Nigel Roebuck all offered
their views one envisages that the World
Championship will become ever more global,
predicted our editor-in-chief all those years ago.
The big scoop, though, was a drawing by
Murray of what he thought would be the fastest
F1 car if there were no rules or restrictions
beyond its size. A 450kg, 1200bhp gas turbine
monster was the end product. OK, we wont be
seeing Fernando Alonso pilot anything like that
in the near future, but what would Murray
think about the drawing 12 years later? What
would he change? Were back to find out.
I looked through it, he says after taki
sip of coffee from a mug with Profes
written on the side, and I tried to make a
of the things that Id change. I got zer
actually got zero. I wouldnt change anyt
because you couldnt improve on that in te
of cornering speed, lap speed and race spe
Twelve years later, it seems we
returning to London without a fol
up story. Until talk turns to the
of Formula 1 in 2012. The Pirelli t
have mixed things up, but we still n
a gimmick such as DRS to prom
overtaking. The rules are so restri
that design has become an exerci
tiny aerodynamic adjustments, w
are so expensive that only three te
have a realistic chance of winnin
championship. We cant un-invent ha
century of aerodynamics, so whats the
without resorting to a falsity like DRS?
Thats fairly straightforward, actua
Murray says. And so begins an hour o
inventing F1, solving the overtaking is
GORDON MURRAYS F1 BRIEF
If you want to keep theroundabout going you haveto keep the show element
Murrays blue-sky proposal of 12 years ago
a closed-cabin, faired-wheel turbine fan car
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an enormous difference to the cost, to spectators
and to overtaking, without using any gimmicks.
Heres what Murray suggests.
WINGS AND DOWNFORCEThe big problem with F1 is that almost always
theres a medium-speed corner leading onto a
straight. With the current cars you lose balance
and downforce when youre following anothercar so youre never close enough to overtake. If
you look back at old films youll see that you
could tailgate someone through the last corner
and onto the straight. Halfway down the
straight you could slipstream and pull out.
With modern cars the front and rear wings
[1 and 2 on Murrays new drawing] create a big
percentage of the downforce. Im picking
numbers out of the sky, but if youve got 25 or
30 per cent of the downforce on the front wing,
and youre in the dirty wash of the car in front,
youre going to spoil the downforce and the
balance. The more downforce you have on a
car the more balance is critical. Now losing a
bit of downforce behind a car is one thing, but
losing the balance is a disaster because you start
getting understeer coming onto the straight
when the front wing isnt working. Youre
never going to be close enough
to overtake.
The easy way to sort that
is to give designers a lot more
freedom in the middle of the
car [3 and 4] lets call it the
venturi section. OK, Im not
advocating sliding skirts
because they were dangerous
while increasing the freedom for designers to
work. How about reducing the costs and trying
to make the cars look different from each
other? Murray has some thoughts on that too.
Of course, our talk wouldnt be complete
without the designer putting pen to paper. A
line drawing of a current racer is produced and
Murray gets to work, redesigning the car.
You always have to look at Formula 1 fromtwo sides, he says. The purist, like me, looks
at it from a technical point of view, and from a
racing perspective because I like to see people
racing. But these days you have to look, more
than 50 per cent of the time, at the show. Thats
very important because if you want to keep F1
with top viewing figures, keep the sponsors
there and keep the roundabout going then you
have to keep the show element.
Its a very fine balance because without the
razzamatazz and the huge fortune thats spent
on entertaining you wouldnt get the sponsors
and you couldnt afford the technical side. And
youve got to have a technical element in order
to maintain it as the premier formula technically.
Thats your balance.
With modern F1 there are so many simple
things that you could change that would make
if they stuck I had a crash with Nelson
at 140mph when the skirts stuck up in Au
However, if you had a controlled gap
bigger venturi section allowed, you wo
able to make 80 or 90 per cent of the dow
in the middle of the car. Then you
dramatically reduce the front wing s
reduce the rear wing so that it was a tri
That does a lot of things. The first animportant point is that youre unlikely
as much balance in the corner as y
currently. Also the number of times that
and get close to the car in front and
touching with the huge front wing is ridi
With the amount of overhang and wi
almost inevitable. When the front wi
involved theyre not likely to bang wh
anything and thats half the fun of
With a smaller front wing youd have
interruptions caused by people having t
in and change the nose cones. Youd al
much closer racing.
TYRESYoud have to look at the tyres [5], a
which is much easier now that theyre th
for everyone. If you had harder tyre com
and made them slightly smaller it woul
a big difference to overtaking.
It would increase the braking distan
there would be much more chance of som
locking a wheel. When youve got a
downforce and very sticky tyres the dif
between a car that brakes really well a
that doesnt is tiny. The difference b
the good brakers and the bad coul
much as 10 metres instead of three or f
The smaller the contact patch geharder the compound youve got to run b
otherwise it would overheat. Also
would be going much quicker coming
corner because about 50 per cent of the
an F1 car is down to its open wheels
make the wheels smaller youll go qui
a straight line.
Lets pick some numbers here.
moment youll be doing 200mph on the
and then have to brake to 100mph
corner. With smaller tyres youd be arr
210mph and youd have to brake to
A side effect of changing the tyre comp
that youll get slip angles again f
spectators. Its one thing I really miss
I really do. The Villeneuves would real
to look after their tyres and the Laud
Sennas would manage a lot better yo
putting the driver into it a bit more.
It doesnt need to be a huge chan
amazing you can reduce the contact p
15 or 20 per cent and it makes a m
difference to the performance of the car
The tyre and wing changes would h
overtaking, but there is another issLAT
Murray proposes narrow
wings to reduce collision
damage (left) and
promote drafting without
need for DRS (below)
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GORDON MURRAYS F1 BRIEF
altogether which I think is quite ridiculous.
When anyone tries an overtaking manoeuvre
they get a penalty. Its beyond my comprehension,
it really is. And it gets worse and worse! I dont
watch every race, but when I do there just
seems to be more and more penalties. They
need to watch MotoGP If its a really
dangerous move then OK, thats fair enough,
but theres a limit.
GOING GREENI think the green element is rubbish. Im
absolutely in line with Bernie [Ecclestone]
I just dont see any point.
If you want F1 to remain the top technical
formula in the world I dont think the way to
do that is to go green. The place to test
technology like that is at Le Mans, in endurance
racing. Formula 1 is a show, its a sprint, its
nothing to do with endurance. At the moment
you can only rev to a certain
amount and youve got to do
a certain number of races
with the engine to keep costs
down. If you didnt have
those regulations then you
can say OK, you can take a
chance on a green technology
and open it up to alternative
green options.
If youre going to have
very, very tight regulations
with KERS then everyone will
have the same system. Thats
not pushing green technology
thats just waving a flag and
saying were a green formula.
And its extremely expensiveas well.
THE SIMILARITYOF THE CARSThe technical side of F1
has been really castrated
now because there are limits
on the engines, and the
regulations are so tight that
without the finer bits of
aerodynamics the cars are
all the same.
What determines the shape of a Formula 1
car, its centre of gravity, its centre of pressure,
is the layout of its major masses thats to say
the driver, the fuel and the power train. The rest
the chassis, suspension, fuel system etc
weighs nothing. What you used to do in the
olden days was to move those major masses
around to get an advantage and then you got
different-shaped cars.
The problem now is that the rules are so
strict you have to have a single tank behind the
driver, and the engines and gearboxes are the
same shape and size, so basically what you have
is a kit car. Everybody wants to go out to the
maximum width and overhangs because thats
the nature of aerodynamics. All the designers
are left with is fiddling with minute changes in
CFD and the wind tunnel.
I do think the current F1 cars are bloody
ugly, theyre not items of art anymore, are they?
Its just the way things have gone. Its where all
the money has gone, into the detail stuff.Im not saying theres an easy solution for
this one, but if you painted all the cars the same
colour theyd all look much the same. One way
to solve this would be to allow the designers
more freedom to look for downforce in the
middle of the car [3 and 4], as I mentioned
earlier. Then youd get different lengths and
shapes in the sidepods. The only other way is to
go back to fuel stops and then youd have more
freedom with a smaller tank. But then youd
have the problem of four sprints again
REDUCING COSTSIn the 1970s you could
have normally aspirated,
supercharged or turbocharged
engines. You could have gas
turbines, two-strokes, four-
strokes and the huge danger
of that which we saw when
the turbos arrived is that
when one technology wins
everyone has to have it. You
dump the budget youve
already spent and you call up
a new one to do the new
power train.
There are lots of ways to
save costs in F1 that thespectators would never
know about. The purist
designers will hate me for
saying this, but one of the
big expenses is the use of
carbon fibre material in the
suspension arms [6].
Now thats great for the
aerodynamicist because you
can make shapes and spend
hundreds of thousands of
pounds in the wind tunnel
on a new wishbone with a tiny new flip and
curve. Strictly speaking something that isnt
part of the sprung mass of the car cant have an
aerodynamic influence its the fan car rule all
over again! If you had a rule that all the
wishbones had to be symmetrical section and
ferrous material, again youd save a fortune.
Youd not only save money, but also you
wouldnt have bits of carbon all over the track
every time someone bumps into someone.
People would then start racing again because
you could have a bump. You might tweak one
arm slightly, but you could keep on racing.
Theres an awful lot of rubbish talked a
Formula 1 technology going into road c
There is some crossover, but the tyre size
way off and 13-inch diameter whee
ridiculous! Trying to package brakes in
13-inch wheel for a 200mph car is so co
Its stupid it should have gone to 18 in
ages ago [7] along with low-profile tyres. T
the technology is a lot more in line with curhigh-performance road cars.
The other way to reduce costs would b
make the body completely smooth, withou
these bargeboards and flip ups. They can
shapes, but theyve got to be a smooth sur
That would save a fortune, but then yo
limiting people again. Its a very fine bala
a difficult balance.
If you gave the designer more freedom
the venturi then thats where youd spend
money. However, if you made the front
rear wings straight and only two or t
elements [1 and 2] then youd save a h
amount of money. You spend thousand
hours in the wind tunnel creating th
dimensional shapes because you now can.
knows how much some teams spend on ma
a front wing they make loads of them e
year and then the 10 they have in stock are
of date. Its costing a fortune.
The truth is that aerodynamics dont
into road cars. It did on the McLaren F1,
that was for 100 people. Other sports car
F1 aerodynamics, but again, thats for a
thousand people. All you can hope to do a
F1 designer with things like aerodynamics
inspire road car designers to push a bit ha
But really, theres no relationship at all.
What becomes clear afte
hour of talking to Gor
Murray is that his prop
changes would make a
difference. The word freedom to desig
tends to mean expensive to the accounta
but if F1 was to cut back on the cost of
wings, KERS and suspension, could teams
afford to have more freedom in the midd
the car? It would need some well-written
from the FIA, thats for certain.
Murray has always looked for the
challenge. It was the McLaren F1 road ca
years ago, then his T.25 and T.27 city cars
their radical iStream build process. Mayb
next hurdle could be re-writing the F1 ruleb
and sending it over to FIA president Jean T
Hes sadly moved on from F1 nowad
though. Would he ever be tempted back?
Ive been there, done that, comes the re
Unless the commercial rights holders, the
and the teams have a sudden change of hea
looks like Murrays ideas will remain, much
his drawing in January 2000, as a pipe drea
much to the disappointment of us purists.
I think thegreen elementis rubbish I just
dont seeany point